Recent legislative and regulatory changes have created a more open service provider environment in the telecommunications industry. In this new environment, more and more companies are offering local exchange services as competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs), that is to say, entering the local market in direct competition with the Regional Bell Operating Company (RBOC) or independent company serving as the incumbent local exchange carrier (LEC). The LECs also face competition in a number of other forms. For example, many wireless services compete with the LEC, at least to some extent. Also, many large corporations operate their own private networks, which siphons off business traffic that otherwise would pass through a LEC's network.
A CLEC, for example, may lease certain unbundled elements of the LEC's network at reduced rates for resale. The CLEC may lease an unbundled port on an end office switch, as a point of access to the LEC's switch and the subscriber loops. The CLEC then connects its own switch network to the unbundled port. Alternatively, the CLEC may operate its own independent switching facilities and loop plant. In either case, the regulatory requirements mandate that the CLEC facilities must be integrated into the public switching telephone network (PSTN) in a seamless manner from the customer's perspective. As such, the customers must be able to make and receive telephone calls using existing dialing patterns, without any apparent distinction in processing as a result of service through the CLEC. The regulatory environment therefore places certain burdens on the incumbent LEC, to provide an efficient interconnection to the CLEC's facilities and to provide mechanisms for compensation between the parties for calls interconnected between the two carriers' networks.
A cellular service provider typically operates a number of switching offices referred to as mobile switching centers (MSCs). The MSCs connect to offices of the LEC network, for local services. The MSCs also connect to a point of presence of an IXC, for long distance and international services. Each MSC connects to a number of base stations. The base stations provide two-way radio communications with wireless stations of the customers. Today, most of the wireless stations are mobile stations, however, a number of cellular service providers are now offering wireless service to fixed locations. A transceiver at the fixed location provides the wireless communications with one of the base stations and provides an on-premises interface to the customer's telephone wiring. To the customer's telephone equipment, the interface often appears like a normal telephone line from the LEC. This fixed location service is sometimes identified as a "wireless loop" or "wireless drop" service.
Many large businesses operate private networks. In such a case, the business entity owns and operates one or more private branch exchanges (PBX). These exchanges may connect to offices of a LEC or CLEC, but only for local off-net traffic. The business usually contracts with an interexchange carrier (IXC), both for trunk circuits between the business' private exchanges and for long distance and international telecommunications services. The private exchanges connect directly to the IXC's equipment and bypass the local carriers.
Interconnect Traffic is generally defined as any calls which are routed and "handed-off" from one carrier to another. This may take the form of Independent, Interexchange Carrier, or Cellular service providers directing traffic to or receiving traffic from a local switch of the LEC. Typically, the LEC must provide tandem capacity and trunking to one or more exchanges of any of these other carriers, to carry the interconnect traffic between the carriers' networks.
Providing this capacity to the other carriers places certain burdens on the LEC. The other carriers, however, actually use this capacity in no small part to take business away from the LEC. The CLEC is a direct competitor, who attempts to design his business plan to take as much premium traffic as possible from the LEC. The cellular providers' wireless loop services also are a form of direct competition. In addition, the sale of many mobile services helps to depress sales of a number of services by the LEC, such as second line services. Finally, the bypass of the LEC by the IXC in cooperation with private networks places the IXC in competition with the LEC for interconnection to the private networks. The interconnection traffic, particularly to large businesses, often is one of the most profitable classes of local telephone service.
For revenue prediction purposes and for purposes of regulatory proceedings, the incumbent LEC tries to determine the erosion of its customer base by the business practices of its competitors. At present, the incumbent LEC has no way to determine the total market "actuals" of the customer base of any of the other potentially competing carriers. The LEC also has no way to track or forecast market gains by the other carriers. Incumbent local service providers today are in an unfortunate position where they are unable to effectively determine the magnitude of their own losses to these various forms of competition.
A number of techniques have been developed for monitoring operations of the public switching telephone network. While these prior techniques may be effective for some purposes, they have not proven effective for analyzing a competitor's traffic. To complete the understanding of the background of the invention, it may be helpful to briefly consider some of the prior techniques for network monitoring.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,475,732 Pester describes an SS7 Network Preventative Maintenance System for detecting potential SS7 and switched network troubles, automatically analyzing the troubles, and providing alarm and corrective action to avoid major network events. The Pester SS7 Real Time Monitor System described in that Patent is a multi-stage SS7 network preventative maintenance tool that traps SS7 messages, detects potential SS7 and switched network troubles, automatically analyzes those troubles, and provides alarm and corrective action instructions to maintenance personnel.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,592,530 to Brockman et al. relates to an SS7 monitoring system for evaluating the operations of telephone switches by capturing data between signaling nodes of a telephone switching system. The Brockman et al. surveillance equipment captures signaling information from different signaling network paths within a mated pair of signaling transfer points (STPs) pair and correlates the fragmented messages for each monitored call. The system is capable of generating call detail records from the SS7 messages of a mated pair cluster, for use in billing and fraud detection.
While the above discussed Pester and Brockman et al. Patents describe the usefulness of monitoring an SS7 common channel interoffice signaling network for event detection, neither of these patents is directed to the particular problems of traffic measurement addressed by the present invention. The Pester Patent places emphasis on monitoring of the SS7 network itself in order to detect troubles in its functioning. The Brockman et al. Patent focuses on monitoring of all links to the STPs in a pair and the assembly of related SS7 signaling messages to form a record of call completions.
While these methodologies may be effective for their stated purposes there remains a distinct need for an efficient and effective tool for monitoring and analyzing competitors' traffic, for example, as it passes between the LEC's network and the networks of the different carriers. Attempts to use other more traditional approaches, such as the accumulation of data from the switches themselves and the Engineering and Administrative Data Acquisition System fell short of providing the desired information.
For example, today, a LEC might attempt to measure bypass traffic by counting the number of customer orders for disconnection from the LEC's network. These orders, termed "disconnects," provide information as to lost customers. However, the disconnect data does not specifically identify what alternate carrier if any that the disconnected customers selected.
A need exists for an effective technique to measure traffic passing between two potentially competing networks, particularly between a network of a LEC and a network operated by another, potentially competing, carrier. More specific needs call for a technique to measure such traffic so as identify the size of the other carrier's customer base and to analyze patterns of the other carrier's traffic.
It is accordingly an object of this invention to provide a relatively low cost solution to the problems outlined above.
It is another object of the invention to provide a timely, powerful, cost effective means of analyzing traffic on one carrier's Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), to accurately analyze traffic of another carrier's network. This information can provide valuable inputs to company forecasting and network capacity management systems.
It is an object of one aspect of the invention to provide a traffic analysis tool to enable a carrier to process data regarding traffic through the carrier's network to estimate the customer base of another carrier.
It is a further object of another aspect of the invention to provide a traffic analysis tool to enable a carrier to process data regarding traffic through the carrier's network to distinguish different types of service provided to customers within another carrier's network.